Name streets after the highest bidder?

Narendra Modi has started renaming airports, streets, and projects that were hitherto named after Mahatma Gandhi or members of the Nehru dynasty. Quite admirable for nothing is more annoying than to see the photographs of the former (alleged) PM Manmolhan Singh and his handler Sonia Gandhi at every toll booth on a highway. It seems that Modi might rename streets and projects after admirable and exemplary luminaries such as Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Ayyankali, Narayana Guru, etc.

Why though?

I agree that these luminaries contributed immensely to Indian society and deserve to be recognized. Okay, name a few projects after them – one per head to be precise. Wouldn’t it make better economic sense to invite private parties and corporations to bid for naming an overwhelming majority of projects after the highest bidder?

Who gains when the highway connecting Chennai and Bengaluru is named NH4? Or even when it is named after an exemplary leader from a bygone era? On the other hand, if it were to be named the Microsoft Highway, after the highest bidder, it would bring huge revenue to the exchequer which could be invested in essential infrastructure projects. This idea could be extended to India’s ailing public schools, transportation, and hospitals to overhaul them.

Needless to say, criminals and frauds should be prevented from bidding. One could readily agree not to name a highway, airport, school, or hospital after an ISIS terrorist, the odious Mother Teresa, or India’s corrupt politicians even if their admirers are ready to place the highest bid. India could formulate a policy and guidelines to exclude such bidders. In all other cases, projects should be named after the highest domestic or international bidder.

Ironically, naming highways and airports after Vivekananda and Narayana Guru shuts out an important source of revenue. In that sense, figuratively speaking, a Vivekananda or Narayana Guru stands in the way of economic development

Let us not import the obsessive materialism from the West. The corporate branding culture has been taken to nauseating levels in the West. India is better off without that.

As far as revenues are concerned, there is enough scope to generate it here, without the western concepts of marketing. All it requires is political will & social participation.

Akshar

Money and wealth knows no east and west. Unless Indian people out of their great values are willing to work for free.

Abhinav Rai

How does one become an “atheist” while being an orthodox Hindu? I am curious.

Akshar

Atheism as in rejection of personal God or higher power is perfectly consistent with an “orthodox Hindu”.

Mr. Blonde

Who decides who’s a crook or a fraud ?

SkyWalker

Lol…I like this idea even if it means renaming of all roads on the name of Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, atleast it won’t be free this time 😛

But exceptions must be on the names of invaders/traitors/criminals etc. Don’t want anything to be named after the likes of Babar, Aurangzeb etc.

Akshar

Yes. It makes absolute sense to let the people bid for these projects. Also, this automatically becomes and extension of their brands and hence they might even put efforts to keep them clean and in good condition.

For example Reliance Highway or Pepsi Goa Airport1

Some Idiot

No, no, no, just no. These Rajiv Gandhi Naam Guarantee Yojanas are bad enough. If you open up the names for bidding, you will end up with a bunch of Mayawati statues in the middle of 6-lane highways after every 5 km. After all, if the road is named after Mayawati, then she would also “demand” the right to place statues in the middle of the road.

Also it looks like the author is an immature NRI who doesn’t know anything about India, but pretends to know enough to preach from the US. “Corrupt politicians should be excluded”, you say? Who decides whether someone is corrupt or not? And if we can agree on who is corrupt and who is not, then I guess we will be able to agree on many more important things. Remember how those Ammatards behaved when Karnataka High Court ordered her arrest?

SG

I remember reading somewhere that a country (Italy?) has a law that no public place can be named after a person only after that person has been dead for 100 years. And once a place is named, it should not be renamed. Something like this would be very welcome in India

thulasiramb

So we should be ready to get confused with many Gandhi and Nehru Roads added to the currently available Gandhi and Nehru roads.

Like adding oil to the fire, more chaos to come on the way.

I feel that this is an adamant stand on India to not to follow an unique naming methods across the nation to identify the roads and Highways easily from Kanayakumari till Kashmir.

If you say NH4 you can easily identify how long this highway is. Via routes, via states, but think if they name it with names there might be more than two highways of same names with different geo locations.